Forests & REDD

10 February 2010: The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the Senegalese Agency for the Great Green Wall Initiative recently co-organized a regional workshop on “Guidelines on Practices for Sustainable Forest Management in Drylands of Sub-Saharan Africa.”

The UN Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE)/UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Timber section, in cooperation with the World Trade Organization (WTO), will organize a workshop to discuss tariff and non-tariff trade barriers and emerging trade regulations on timber. Participants will discuss the economic impacts of trade and trade-related measures on timber markets, taking into account the link between trade liberalization and the key challenges facing the forest-based sector, including climate change.

12 February 2010: The Report of the 52nd meeting of the Executive Board of the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), which took place from 8-12 February 2010, and considered matters relating to the operation of the CDM, is now available.

At a joint meeting of the Bureau of the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) and the Chairpersons of its functional commissions, Arvid Ozols, Chair of the ninth session of the UN Forum on Forests (UNFF 9), delivered an address on recent achievements of the UNFF with regard to sustainable forest management and its contributions to gender equality and internationally agreed development goals.

8 February 2010: The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has created a new website on assisted natural regeneration (ANR) of forests, an effective and low cost forest and biodiversity restoration and rehabilitation method.

4 February 2010: The Climate Investment Funds (CIF) held meetings of its Scaling Up Renewable Energy in Low Income Countries (SREP) sub-committee on 3 February 2010, and its Forest Investment Program (FIP) sub-committee from 3-4 February 2010, in Washington DC, US.

28 January 2010: The UNFCCC Secretariat has published reports submitted in 2009 of the individual reviews of the annual submissions of: the Russian Federation (FCCC/ARR/2009/RUS); Norway (FCCC/ARR/2009/NOR); Switzerland (FCCC/ARR/2009/CHE); Lithuania (FCCC/ARR/2009/LTU); and Iceland (FCCC/ARR/2009/ISL).

1 February 2010: The latest issue of the International Tropical Timber Organization's (ITTO) newsletter, Tropical Forest Update, includes an article that questions whether payments for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries (REDD) can make natural forests competitive with oil palm plantations.